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Purdue zipTrips earns Agriculture 2012 Team Award

​WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A program that takes field trips to the classrooms of thousands of elementary and middle school students across the country has been selected to receive this year's Purdue Agriculture Team Award.

The annual award recognizes interdisciplinary team achievements of Purdue faculty and staff.

"The zipTrips Team is making a difference by creating virtual field trips that connect thousands of students in hundreds of classrooms across the country," said Jay Akridge, the Glenn W. Sample Dean of the College of Agriculture. "Using a novel combination of materials and media, zipTrips are an innovative way to provide students with fun, engaging and memorable educational experiences in science."

Purdue zipTrips started in 2007 through a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to J. Paul Robinson in Purdue's College of Veterinary Medicine The zipTrips team develops and delivers electronic field trips to students in Indiana and dozens of states, as well as a few schools abroad. The programs connect pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade students with Purdue scientists in real time through interactive videoconferencing and web streaming technology. The zipTrips content meets state and national science standards in comparative biology.

The latest program, "It's a Gene Thing!" reached more than 5,000 students at 127 schools in 30 states. Other programs were viewed in Austria and Dubai.

Faculty and staff from the College of Veterinary Medicine, College of Agriculture, Discovery Learning Research Center, College of Science, College of Engineering, Information Technology at Purdue and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are included in the award.

A ceremony honoring the award will be held at 2 p.m. May 9 in the Deans Auditorium of Pfendler Hall.